When you see what’s happening in schools, it’s easy to imagine that the general malaise and anger is being directed at teachers. “Why should anyone be happy, goes the thinking of Jon Everyman, if I’m not happy? If I can’t hold a steady job, neither should my children’s teachers! They’re too happy anyways when they greet me at the classroom door in the morning!“

The Metlife survey report aligns these conditions with teachers’ job satisfaction, and the likelihood they will leave the profession:

This decline in teacher satisfaction is coupled with large increases in the number of teachers who indicate that they are likely to leave teaching for another occupation and in the number who do not feel their jobs are secure….teachers with low job satisfaction are more likely to teach in urban schools and in schools with larger proportions of minority students. Teachers with low job satisfaction are more likely than others to teach in urban schools (32% of teachers with low job satisfaction teach in urban schools, compared to 25% of teachers with low job satisfaction). Teachers with low job satisfaction are also more likely to teach in schools with more than two-thirds minority students (40% vs. 28%).

Likelihood to leave the profession shows a similar pattern in demographic characteristics as job satisfaction.

I suppose school districts aren’t waiting for teachers to leave…they are dismissing them ahead of time. What terrible price Texas will pay for this ideological stance that is destroying the very fabric, or infrastructure, of schools. Will we be able to rebuild them, or will those that leave walk away angry, bitter, and refusing to return?